Today I helped with removing the ham radio antennae from the top of Meg's school. While on the roof I spied a Monarch migrating by. Afterwards I headed out on a hike to see if I could find some Dainty Sulphur butterfly I mentioned on a recent post. Struck out again on finding any Dainty Sulphurs. My other goal was to get a really good Honey Bee photo for the state fair, hoped to find some big sunflowers to shoot them on, failed on that also.
I did however add a new species of butterfly to the Falls Lake list a Long-tailed Skipper. Falls Lake which now stands at 96 species of butterflies second only to Weymouth Woods with 98 species.
I had much excitment when I found a Locust Borer, Megacyllene robiniae feeding on golden rod. Had only seen one of these in Virginia back in 2005 when I was spending the fall tagging Monarchs at the Eastern Shore of Virginia. These are considered really bad pests on Black Locust trees.
Locust Borer, Megacyllene robiniae
My trick to getting these photos was to set the camera in manual mode and set the focus to about 1 1/2 inches and shoot from 1 1/2 inches away. This Locust Borer ignored me entirely and let me take a lot of photos, these two photos were the best ones.
Honey Bee gathering nectar on golden rod. Around here golden rod is considered a good late season nectar source for the bees, although many complain it stinks like rotten socks and the honey is not very tasty.
Viceroy, the mimic of the Monarch. This one was tiny, never seen a Monarch as small as this Viceroy. Getting photos of these butterflies one has to be patient and wait for the right one to come along, they do a lot of chasing which is not very good for photographing them. The lighting was back lit making the butterfly look dark, so I popped up the flash and the flash lit it for me. Patient let me explain that. I have seen maybe 100 Viceroys on the past 5-6 walks, this one was the only cooperative one I found. More on patience, I saw maybe 1000 butterflies today and the Viceroy was the only one that even produced a decent photograph. I did get a Monarch on goldenrod but the lighting was bad. I could have crawled up to 2 different puddle parties of Cloudless Sulphurs and Sleepy Oranges, but have lots and lots of puddling photos.
